General Specialist

The future masters of technology will have to be light-hearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb.

–Marshall McLuhan, 1967

In IT, like most tech domains, there’s an obsessive focus on specialization.

And so, résumés (and careers) inevitably reflect that specialization: bulleted lists of popular technologies. Certifications, languages, industry-specific software tools. Buzzwords, acronyms, credentials. Years (or decades) spent proudly focused one or two technologies or vendors.

But that obsessive focus, and the people it shapes, are often what creates the technologies we love to hate. The processes that frustrate and discourage us; the painful, technology-driven solutions that create as many human problems as they solve; the privacy-exploiting products that ignore human problems altogether and exist solely to turn the *humans* into the product.

Here’s a simple example: HR systems used to screen applicants are infamously painful and overly complex, often requiring actions like the painstaking retyping of a resume after uploading one. Why is that? Because it’s a technology-driven solution, not a human problem-driven one. The humans experience comes last, in service to the technology.

I’ve spent most of my professional life as what you’d call a ‘generalist’—or as an old acquaintance once called it, a ‘General Specialist’. I didn’t plan it that way; when I first went to college I spent about two years studying electrical engineering, determined to become an expert in power generation so I could invent a limitless power source. But–I cared less about the movement of electrons and elegantly designed logic than I did about how people might live and create with that power source. The point seemed to be an elegant human life, not the machine.

I usually tell people that the work that interests me most is where humans and technology come together. Sure, I can write SQL queries, implement Agile, manage a backlog, draft a SWOT analysis, explain HIPAA privacy constraints, all those things–but they’re just means to an end. Mere tools. They’re things I could train anyone to start doing in a short amount of time.

I don’t mean to minimize technical expertise or domain knowledge or professional training. I have all those things, too. They have value and a place. But they aren’t the *point* of technology or technology jobs; they’re just tools.

Saying all this in a job interview, though, has gotten me everything from puzzled stares to outright anger (“okay, but have you saved money by making processes more efficient? Have you facilitated innovation? Do you have Agile experience?”).

But people who can focus on the big picture, see the humans, connect problems and ideas and choose tools and make meaningful decisions in ways that make the human experiences better? There are no certifications for that. No degrees, credentials, bleeding edge technologies, nothing. And they’re the people we need most in a world where technology is part of almost every aspect of human life.